


time as it is

by lost_spook



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: 500 prompts, Gen, Post-Assignment Six, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is relative, after all, and some things are better when they’re broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time as it is

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the ending of the series.
> 
> For astrogirl in the [500 Prompts Meme](http://lost-spook.livejournal.com/300554.html) \- Prompt 266: Take your practised powers and stretch them out – Silver. 
> 
> I didn't intend to end up back at Assignment Six for this prompt, but I did. I suppose it comes to us all eventually, in this fandom...

Silver slipped in through the door of the service station café and sat down at one of the tables. It was not, he noted, with interest but not surprise, the same as the one he had left earlier. It was extremely similar and probably in some very particular aspects the same place, but the differences were immediately evident to his eyes. For instance, the placing of the counter was reversed and there was blue edging where there had been red before.

Blue made him think of Sapphire and then, in inevitable association, the frightening confusion that had left him alone: an instant that had compressed into itself stolen time, a trap collapsing, time returning and at the last – and still – a profound sense of the absence of his two colleagues.

Remembering it made Silver feel dizzy again and he leant against the wall beside him, although casually, not about to let this moment of weakness be apparent to anyone who should be watching.

“I’m closing up,” the man from behind the counter said, as he walked over. (It did, suddenly, seem very odd to have people about again.) “You can’t stop there. This place isn’t twenty-four hours, you know. Some of us have got homes to go to.”

Silver turned his head and gave the man a smile. “Then don’t let me stop you.”

“I – er –” The man put a hand to his forehead and frowned, before recovering himself. “Look, you need to go, mister. I’m locking this place up in the next five minutes.”

“I won’t do any harm,” Silver said. “I’m just waiting for someone. Your manager assured me it wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Oh, did he?”

“Yes,” said Silver, remaining seated. He smiled again. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you – oh, and do make sure you lock the door on your way out. There’s no telling who might want to get in.”

The man opened his mouth and shut it again, then gave Silver a hard look before walking away.

Silver grinned to himself, but confusing one human really wasn’t much consolation in the circumstances.

The man was still giving him odd looks when he left, as if there was something he’d forgotten and ought to remember but couldn’t place it. Still, he went away, and he locked the door behind him, leaving Silver alone in the gloom, which was precisely what Silver wanted.

The trouble was, thought Silver, there wasn’t very much _time_ left, and he wasn’t sure how long what he had in mind was going to take. Whether or not the Transient Beings had meant to leave him and wouldn’t trouble him again or they hadn’t and might soon be back was one worrying thought. The other was how soon any of his other colleagues would arrive. Of course, there would be some relief in that, but… well, that was another problem, wasn’t it? There was no telling what any of the others might do when and if they got here, or what they would make of his role in the proceedings.

If, after all, from their point of view, he had left unofficially, rather a while before Sapphire and Steel and remained behind while they had been taken, it didn’t – however unfairly – present him in the best light. And he had to stay here, because nobody else could retrieve Sapphire and Steel. Depending on current priorities, they might not even try, or not hard enough.

He could do it, though, of course. He knew that, the same way he always did.

He may not have had that box of Theirs any more, but he held the pattern for it inside his mind and so he duplicated a second copy. It appeared in his hand and, with a slight, sad smile, he set it down on the table in front of him, and opened it up.

There were chess pieces inside. Silver had suspected as much. It would no longer work as it had before, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get some answers out of it. 

It was merely going to take time.

Silver held the copy in his hands again, and re-duplicated it. This time he let the chess pieces fall and scatter on the floor around him.

Time was not on his side, of course. That always was the difficulty, wasn’t it?

***

Time, yes, time was the difficulty. Time was relative; it didn’t necessarily move in linear patterns as it should, and it certainly never kept to straight lines. And when you weren’t looking, it stole the game pieces away from you.

So, even if he had everything right now, which he did, of course he did, it rather depended on Time, and Time was always unreliable.

***

They were sitting at a table when he arrived in the café that was again very like the original, but was and was not, in much the same way as the place Silver had just left.

The box was open between them, the chess pieces fallen out of it, but they weren’t playing. They weren’t even moving. They weren’t speaking, either – or not to him. Maybe, somewhere, between each other in a way that had gone so deep now that even he couldn’t tell.

Silver moved forward eagerly, but, as he took these facts in, felt the fear again for the first time since he’d started; his attention having been otherwise all on the task in hand.

He’d got everything right, he knew he had, but it might be a matter of time again. Perhaps, despite his best efforts, he had been too late after all.

“Sapphire,” he said, reaching them. “Steel.”

It seemed a very long moment before at last they turned their heads to look at him, but slowly, too slowly.

“Silver,” said Steel.

Sapphire stretched out her hand to touch her partner’s arm where it rested on the table. “ _Is_ it Silver?”

They both looked at him again.

“Well, of course it is,” he said, bristling at the idea. “Who else could it be?”

“It could be Them,” she said, and looked back at Steel. “Some other work of Theirs.”

Silver sat down on the table behind him and he sagged a little as he did so. “Oh,” he said, softly. “How long has it been?”

“Eternity,” said Sapphire, her voice distant and indefinably sad. “Only one moment, for eternity.”

Steel was still as pragmatic as ever. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are no markers of time here.”

“No time,” echoed Sapphire. “Nothing.”

Silver leant forward. “Well, that’s not quite true, is it? _You’re_ here. How long do you think -?”

“Is it important?” Steel asked.

Silver gave a slight laugh, and slid off the table, back onto his feet. “No, it isn’t. But then – isn’t it about time that you left?”

He found himself on the receiving end of another one of those disconcerting dual looks.

“What did you think I was here for?” he countered. 

“… leave?” said Steel.

Silver nodded. “Yes, and we should hurry. Even I can’t make the connection hold forever, you know.”

They both stared back at him again.

“If you don’t,” said Silver, “then I shall be stuck here with you, and I don’t suppose you want to risk that, do you?” Let them make of that what they would, he decided. Then he was seized by another alarming thought. “You _can_ still move, can’t you?”

Steel gazed across at Sapphire, who returned the look, as if asking each other the same question, but then, to Silver’s relief, they both stood up together in one motion.

“Allow me to show you to the emergency exit,” said Silver, with a wave of his hand, and he smiled.

***

Once back in the service station, the two of them remained standing exactly in the spot where they’d arrived. Silver found that rather disconcerting, too.

He pretended he hadn’t noticed and that he had complicated bits and pieces to disconnect, and crawled around the edges of the room, running his fingers along the skirting board, but he kept stealing glances back at them.

They were here, of course, and that was a considerable improvement, but there was a distance between them that hadn’t been there before – a barrier, perhaps. He wondered, because everything could alter, could corrupt and erode, even such beings as they. Perhaps what he had fetched back was no longer Steel, no longer Sapphire? Maybe that was why the Transients had let him go so easily?

But, no, he thought, They _couldn’t_ have known what he’d do; no one could have predicted that. Silver crossed back to the counter and developed a sudden and intense interest in the sweets and chocolate there, as if the fate of the universe depended on his finding the right packet of Polos, or bar of Twix, unlikely as that was, even in his line of work. And he watched them.

Steel swung around abruptly then, startling Silver. He had a frown on his face and that in itself was a familiar enough sight to be almost reassuring. 

It had been a long time, that was all, Silver thought and realised that everything else must be new again to them – time, these objects with different ages and histories, movement, progression, changes, all of it. How strange it must seem.

“How did you manage it?” Steel asked. 

Sapphire moved, but she didn’t pay any attention to either of them, walking across to touch the painted wall with her fingertips and then laying her other hand on the nearest table.

Silver looked at Steel. “How did I do it?” Then he gave an awkward laugh, and motioned a hand around him, and Steel finally seemed to take in the abnormal state of the café: there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of copies of the travel chess sets strewn about everywhere, in varying stages of construction or de-construction.

“But they’d stopped working,” said Steel. “And so many, Silver? What was the point?”

Silver followed his gaze and then wished he hadn’t. He knew exactly how many boxes there were here; which ones were half-complete, which were missing chess pieces, which were visibly intact but contained hidden flaws. He knew how many were not even here any longer. He was suddenly beginning to realise that this was perhaps too much information. Overwhelming, even.

“Well, I noticed that,” said Silver, remaining as airy-sounding as he could. “Obviously. That was the point. I had – had – had – had – had – had –” He halted in alarm as echoes of himself spread out across the room, each one visually and audibly fainter than the last.

Steel stepped nearer. “Silver!”

Silver merely shook himself and gave an embarrassed smile. “Well, you see – see – see – see – see –”

“ _Sapphire_ ,” Steel said.

She finally turned around and looked over at the two of them. Before either of them could move or speak, she was beside them.

Steel gripped Silver’s wrist, and the effect ceased, much to Silver’s relief. 

“Thank you,” said Silver, sounding shaken for once.

Sapphire moved to stand in front of him, examining him closely, her eyes beginning to grow blue, first faintly and then more vividly until she finally took a step back again, and it faded away. She looked at Silver, meeting his gaze at last, and then she smiled.

“It seems,” she said, with something of her old cool amusement, “to be… temporal hiccoughs, Silver.”

“Oh,” said Silver.

Steel, beside him, glanced downwards, his gaze travelling past where he still gripped Silver’s wrist, to the other’s hand below it, closed into a fist. _Silver. You’re hiding something._

Silver shifted a little and gave him a sidelong, guilty look, before swapping the unseen item in question to his other hand, and then he opened it out to reveal something that looked like a tiny star lying in his palm.

“What is it?” Sapphire asked, its light reflected in her eyes: one star now three.

Silver glanced from one to the other. Being held onto this firmly by Steel was making him uncomfortable. He didn’t like being pinned down. “I duplicated another copy of that box of theirs – and then I reduplicated that – and on, and on. Each one was less than the other – by an infinitesimal amount to begin with, but still less. It’s a sort of process of erosion, I suppose. In theory. I’ve never tested it out before.”

“And what _did_ you do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Silver. “You can see the results all around you. By the end, there were half-boxes, missing pieces – until finally, finally, all that was left behind was this.”

“Nothing but the essential core of what it was – or could be,” Sapphire said, still studying it. She reached out and touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers. “And this is what you used to come after us?”

Silver looked down at it. “Well, that was the starting point. Next I had to find something here that was still connected to the other location. I was sure that something must –”

“And what did?”

“Small things,” said Silver, leaning in towards Steel slightly, and giving him a smile. “The electrical wiring, for one. Oddments here and there – even the rain on the windows.”

Sapphire tilted her head to one side. “And if nothing had, Silver? Would this have been enough?”

“I don’t know,” said Silver and laughed when he saw Sapphire raise her eyebrows at him, at his admitting to failure of a sort. He didn’t explain, though, because, of course, he himself was the other factor involved, but that was something that should remain unsaid. “Anyway, I knew something had to. They used this as a pattern, now and in the past; they chose it carefully, so it couldn’t be entirely separate, whatever they had done. I’d have kept looking. And then, of course, the cutlery was very useful, as you can imagine.”

Steel had been losing interest in his explanations and reached out to the star-like core, just as Silver, apparently coincidentally, closed his fingers back over it and passed it to Sapphire, who took it in both of her hands.

“Now, let’s see,” said Silver, to Steel. “Try letting go –”

Steel released his hold on Silver’s wrist.

“o – o – o – o – o – o –” said the echoes of Silver, drifting back across the room and vanishing into the wall.

Steel caught hold of his arm.

“Oh,” said Silver. “Well. I seem to have – I mean, it appears that I must have –”

“Over-stretched yourself?”

“Well, yes.”

Sapphire walked around him and back again. “We’ll have to do something about it. If this carries on, you’ll break up entirely.”

“Oh, no, surely –”

“Yes, Silver.”

Silver glanced from one to the other, and then gave Steel a smile. “Or I suppose Steel could just carry on holding my hand?”

“I think,” said Sapphire, “that we had better find a more practical solution.”

Steel frowned at the boxes again. “You had to go this far?”

“I -,” Silver began, and then halted. It had all seemed perfectly logical at the time, but suddenly he was unsure. Perhaps that was the result of pushing himself to previously untried limits, perhaps because he didn’t always like to think that he _had_ limits, or not when it came to technical matters. And all that had counted was retrieving the two of them. He knew they’d deal with any consequences. All he could do, however, was to give Steel a sheepish smile.

“And I thought you said your copies were perfect.”

“They are!” Silver waved his free hand in indignation. “It’s a complex process, Steel. But then, I suppose _you_ wouldn’t understand that.”

Steel glared at him.

“Well, now,” said Sapphire, “we need to deal with you, Silver – and dispose of all this.” She crouched down as she spoke and picked up a white king lacking its crown, and then half a white knight.

There was something unnerving at the sight of so many incomplete boxes and chess pieces, all around them, Silver acknowledged. But on the other hand, it had worked, hadn’t it? And while he still knew there was a gap between him and the two of them, it had lessened as they focused on him; becoming something that was again measurable, possibly even navigable with more time. (Time again, of course.)

They were all interrupted by the rough opening of door leading out into the lobby, and then a man who was presumably the manager walked in and stopped in shock. “Bloody _hell_!” he said. “What the -?”

Steel let go of Silver in turning towards the newcomer.

“Steel! Don’t!” said Silver, and then: “o – o – o – o –” the echoes said as they faded away. 

The man backed out again hastily. They could hear the outer door banging behind him as he ran. Steel looked as if he might have gone after him, but he didn’t; he halted and grabbed Silver’s arm again, to Silver’s relief.

_He’ll be phoning for the police_ , said Sapphire, in detached amusement. She looked down at her hands, at the misshapen chess pieces and the core. “Silver?”

“Well, I could probably undo what I did eventually,” said Silver, “but it took me all night in the first place – and given the effects of that, I’m not sure it would be a good idea.”

“We don’t have that long.” Steel turned to Sapphire. “It’s not that many hours, though. Can you turn time back?”

Sapphire shivered. “No. Not here, Steel.”

“I wonder,” said Silver, suddenly, and they both turned to look at him. “Pass me one of those boxes, and then let go, Steel.”

_Silver –_

“Go on,” said Silver. “Given the origin of these, this isn’t very safe, is it? And it might just work – with a little help from Sapphire.”

Sapphire looked at Steel.

“Once we do that –” said Steel, and then stopped. He frowned at them both. “Silver. We’ll seal off the place – we don’t need to worry about their ridiculous policemen.”

Silver turned his head towards Sapphire.

“I think it may be the only way,” she said. “It is a risk, though.”

“Charming as your company undoubtedly is, Steel,” added Silver, leaning against him again, “we can’t really go about arm in arm for the rest of our existence, can we?”

“You know what it is you’re both saying?”

“As to sealing the place,” Silver said, more seriously. “I don’t think… Steel, how much longer do you want to stay in here?”

Sapphire took a step forward.

“And at the end,” said Silver, “you’ll find me. I know you will. I’ll be unmissable, after all.”

Steel glanced over at Sapphire once more, and when she nodded, he let go of Silver.

***

It was a strange experience. Silver – all of him (was he divided into fractions, he wondered, or had he been multiplied too many times?) – focused only on the undoing of each box until none were left, one simple action repeated over and over, just not in the conventional, or more linear sense.

He heard and saw in fragments when he looked around, or occasionally in snatches that the original Silver caught, clearer than the rest.

“I don’t think this was a good idea,” he heard Steel say at one of these times.

“It’s working.”

“ _One_ of him is enough of a liability.”

“It’s more complex than that...”

Then, at the end, as it all became very confused, and there were no more boxes left, only Silver seeing and feeling and hearing through multiple facets; at the very end, everything suddenly darkened and he knew that whatever was left of him, Sapphire had found it, and had him in her hands.

***

Silver remained as he was, and let Sapphire keep hold of him. After all that had happened, he was quite happy to be there, absolutely one being only, and close enough now to see with her as she and Steel left the service station and stepped out into the world, finally away from the trap, from the isolation of being in one static moment.

She caught her breath as she saw the sky lightening, and stopped to watch as night gradually gave way to morning; the shifting colours of dawn a visible demonstration of change, the world turning and turning again – time moving onwards, as it must: ever present enemy and defining force of their existence.


End file.
